Quotes from Fred Saberhagen

I have some good stories yet to tell.

I suspect that writer's block afflicts mainly people who have some stable and ample source of income outside of writing. So far it hasn't been a problem.

The Swords were still interesting but by then a cast of characters had started to appear and go on from book to book, and other things about the world began to feel constricting. And there were other things I wanted to do, so I closed the series up and stopped it.

I started writing seriously about 1960, at the fairly advanced age of 30.

At this stage, my chief professional goal is simply to keep on writing and making a living at it.

I guess if one set of my books was selling like Stephen King's, and the other wasn't selling at all, editors would want me to do the ones that sold like Stephen King's. But they seem to be willing to let me pick what I want to do next.

There are interactions with characters within the game which I think are pretty neatly done considering the limitations that you have to work with. I mean, a computer can't really generate a character that talks back and forth with you successfully.

If people ask me for the ingredients of success, I say one is talent, two is stubbornness or determination, and third is sheer luck. You have to have two out of the three. Any two will probably do.

My gut feeling is that paper and ink are going to be with us for a long time yet, and in substantial quantities, though certainly books are now going to be available in other forms.

I finally decided one day, reading science fiction magazines of the time, I could do at least as well as some of these people are doing. So I finally made a serious effort.

Probably all the books I've ever written have been efforts to define the boundaries of humanity.

And what we know, or think we know, about the universe of space and time is changing very quickly.

I wouldn't like to just do one story or one type of stories all the time.

The same tools that make any writer good, plus a cheerful willingness to suspend belief.

Only towards the end of this process are any of the chapters in fully readable condition, a state of affairs that used to alarm my wife. But Joan's got used to it.

Research is of considerable importance in certain fields, such as science and history.

I wrote speculative fiction because I loved to read it, and thought I could do better than some of the people who were getting published.

The Berserkers have been with me for about forty years, and we're not done yet.

Actually ideas are everywhere. It's the paperwork, that is, sitting down and thinking them into a coherent story, trying to find just the right words, that can and usually does get to be labor.

There's a big overlap with the people you meet at the fantasy and science fiction cons.

Research is of considerable importance in certain fields, such as science and history.

I finally decided one day, reading science fiction magazines of the time, I could do at least as well as some of these people are doing. So I finally made a serious effort.

Who holds Wayfinder finds good roads, Its master's step is brisk; The Sword of Wisdom lightens loads But adds unto their risk.

The vision of Van Helsing as a vampire is one before which my imagination balks; this is doubtless only a shortcoming on my part; he may have been well fitted for the role, since as we have seen he had already the power, by means of speech, to cast his victims into a stupor.